New Burlingame mayor values outreach over speed

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By Mike Rosenberg | Bay Area News Group, Mercury News, San Mateo County Times

November 14, 2010 at 8:59 am

There is just something about Burlingame that makes it stand out.

Whether it’s decadelong battles over a new grocery store, rain-soaked rallies against an unwanted construction project or hours-long public meetings on seemingly minuscule topics, many Burlingame residents appear to care deeply about their city.

Terry Nagel, a longtime journalist who will be sworn in as mayor for the second time tonight, said it wasn’t always that way.

She yearned for that neighborly bond in 2002, when she rounded up some residents who had grown fed up with blackouts in the town. She invited PG&E representatives to her home that winter.

“To their surprise, the room was completely packed with neighbors who were very upset,” Nagel recalled Friday.

The next year, after a barrage of complaints from Nagel’s group, PG&E installed $2.4 million worth of upgrades to help reduce blackouts. She liked the feeling so much that later that year she ran for City Council — as a political newbie in a town where candidates routinely spend tens of thousands of campaign dollars — and beat all five challengers.

Nagel’s first term as mayor came in 2007, when she was re-elected to her second four-year term. In Burlingame, a new councilmember is appointed mayor each November.

Thus far, she has spent most of her time pushing the agenda of openness that makes so many love the city yet frustrates others. Either way, it’s helped define the town, and it’s something she is proud of.

“People spend a lot of time these days staring at screens” for electronics, Nagel said. “I think there’s a real hunger for people to get connected. And I’ve seen that when people do that in Burlingame, they just blossom. They go from thinking of Burlingame as ‘just a place I live’ to thinking of it as ‘my home, this is where I belong, and I’m connected to a lot of people and I matter.’ “

She cited numerous initiatives she spearheaded over the past decade — an online complaint forum where residents get responses from officials within 48 hours, the creation of neighborhood groups, streaming city meetings online, a new website, e-mail blast lists — in helping shape the city into a place where many feel like they have a stake in what their local government does.

“It’s been a dramatic change since I came on the council in 2003. The meetings used to be fairly deserted back then,” said Nagel, who has been vice mayor for the past year. “It’s a much more open, participatory type of citizenry now.”

She said it was not simple to achieve. She remembered wanting to change the city’s website, which she called a “disaster,” by putting together a panel of residents with Internet expertise to put out a formal request for, but not bid on, a contract to redesign the site. At the time, she said encountered pushback: Where would this type of government lead? Will residents be in charge of City Hall?

“That approach was not welcomed,” she said. But the site redesign happened.

The slow and steady approach required by including so much input can produce a good outcome, but it is expensive. The pains of getting there also can be excruciating, and often the Burlingame government moves more slowly than its neighbors. The most glaring example was the Safeway rebuild. First proposed in 1997, the store is only now being built because of a laborious review process.

It’s also a dangerous strategy to use when the tide shifts quickly. The city, for instance, got a late start on its response to high-speed rail — it only recently became outraged over the project, despite the existence of plans to run the tracks through the town from years prior — and has been unable to catch up as state planners have raced ahead.

Officials have also cited the town’s reputation for being hard on developers, who see the review process there as so slow that major projects in the city are rare.

For her mayoral term, Nagel isn’t planning to shake things up and does not yet have any ideas for new initiatives. In addition to outreach, she said, she’ll focus more on high-speed rail, the environment and downtown, including putting into action a recently completed plan to add housing around Burlingame Avenue.

“We really need to be working that plan and not just let it sit on the shelf,” Nagel said.

Her term, though, may not last long.

She is running for a soon-to-be-vacant seat on the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors, where she will face stiff competition. If she wins the special election next year, the mayoral job would fall to Jerry Deal, a councilman who will be promoted to vice mayor tonight. Current Mayor Cathy Baylock will join Ann Keighran and Michael Brownrigg as council members.

Nagel said she plans to keep her full-time job as an editor for a nonprofit’s website and is not worried about giving the city short shrift despite all the duties that come with running for supervisor. She was unapologetic about running for the job, saying she could still work on Burlingame’s behalf for regional issues if she wins the election.

“I’d never forsake Burlingame,” she said. “My heart is always here, and I’d continue to work for the best interest of Burlingame.”

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